Compare and contrast the presentation of what you consider to be the author's themes in '1984' and 'Brave New World'.

Extracts from this document...

Introduction

Compare and contrast the presentation of what you consider to be the author's themes in '1984' and 'Brave New World' Kate Graham 2947 Centre Number 39520 The first element of the two novels to compare is feminism. In 1984 Julia is much stronger emotionally than Winston is. She automatically takes the lead in every situation, but does not care about political ideologies. She does not care when Winston informs her that the party did not invent aeroplanes, she only has a problem with the party's political statutes when they are at odds with her own wishes, and intrude upon her life. Although Julia a determined and decisive character, the way Orwell made her completely unimpressed with revolutionary ideals cannot be ignored. The same can be said of Lenina Crowne in Brave New World. Lenina finds the way Bernard wants to watch the storm terrible, and even starts to cry at being asked to do this with him. The thought of doing something individual, or different from the rest of society in any way alarms and frightens her, and she does not realise why John the Savage is having problems being with her at the end of the novel. She has no interest in doing anything unconventional. However, there is a marked difference between the two characters. While Julia wants to rebel against the party, Lenina has not the slightest interest in doing anything unordinary or different. Perhaps when Winston commented Julia was 'only a rebel from the waist down' Orwell intended this to be a critique on her character. It is interesting that the two authors chose to portray the female leading characters in this way. ...read more.

Middle

Also the electrocution of the children to teach them not to enjoy flowers or books (nature or the seeking of knowledge), in the Neo-Pavlovian conditioning is also scientifically based. They even manage to teach the children not to fear death. When people die they are kept in a ward with perfumed air and given a chocolate �clair each time somebody dies. This is in complete juxtaposition with 1984 where death is used as a tool for creating fear, so that the party can control its members. Also in 1984 the party's methods of controlling children are totally different. They use organisations, (reminiscent of the junior anti-sex league to rid them of the sex instinct), to turn the children on their parents in a bizarre role-reversal of modern culture. Children are commonly thought of as being corrected and scolded by their parents. The organisation they must all belong to named, 'The Spies' teaches them to watch their parents for thought crime and to denounce them to the Thought Police if caught doing this. Winston has an inbuilt fear of children due to this and finds the Parson's family's children's games unbearable - ' It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters'. It is not just the Parson's family that Winston has trouble dealing with. In fact, all families have been turned upside down in this manner. The party intelligently controls the family unit, not by using the parents, (whose love for their children they cannot control), but by turning the offspring against the parents, who with the correct conditioning will report even their own mother for suspected "thought crime". ...read more.

Conclusion

People are encouraged and expected at all times to consume as much as they can. Not even a new game is allowed to pass into use unless it uses 'at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games'. The conditioning of the children even contains this measure, reciting 'ending is better than mending' and 'I do so love new things'. BNW is almost a totally capitalist system, the individual's needs being completely phased out and replaced with the needs of society only. The way that 1984 uses language is truly staggering. Orwell seems to have predicted with surprising ease the arrival of political spin-doctors, talking but never using words that actually mean anything. In the canteen at work, Winston describes this as 'quack-quack-quacking'. Newspeak is slowly being totally introduced to the population of Oceania. It involves taking out of use any words, which serve a double purpose; any way the party can be contradicted. Words like rebellion will cease to exist. If a population is only given certain ways to use language the party feels they will no longer be able to up rise against them, as there will be no conceivable way to do it. Controlling language is a way to hold onto the party's power, and stop any form of opposition of it whatsoever. How can you express you political beliefs if the word politics and even the word belief do not exist? This is what the party hopes to achieve, total and utter mind control. This is a theme, which does not occur in BNW, hypnopaedia is used as a way of controlling language, but not on the widespread scale that Orwell has for 1984. ...read more.

The above preview is unformatted text

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE 1984 section.

Related GCSE 1984 essays

Now that he had a secure hiding place, almost a home..." (Orwell 1949 p. 151). "Often she [Julia] was ready to accept the official mythology, simply because the difference between truth and falsehood did not seem important to her" (Orwell 1949 p.

In both 1984 and Gilead, pleasure is a crime against society and sex is valuable for the sole purpose of having children. Books are burned and birth control is a dim memory of a heathen past. Society compensates for both the loss of nature and the loss of sex with two-minute hates (1984)

Winston purchases a journal and writes his personal thoughts about the brotherhood, an underground resistance group. Some critics say that this is a product of a Freudian concept. Freud believed that an individual's actions come from their conscious and unconscious mind.

This may be because we see the world through the eyes of an individual in another very uniform society, Winston Smith. Winston's singularity is suppressed through the fear of death and torture, under the eye of constant surveillance in the telescreens.

Sex has become something only necessary to produce a future generation and not for enjoyment. Perhaps Winston's previous experiences are the foundations for him, as well as his initial hate for Big Brother and the society his lives in, to embark on the perilous affair with Julia.

When the two return they talk about the experience, and they are aware of Hodoshe's plan against them to try and break their solidarity. 'John- ...I laughed at first... then I hated you Winston- That's what he wanted. John- It was going to last forever, man!

She gave him the majority of the piece and the rest to his little sister, but he stole it from her. She started to cry while Winston ran away with the chocolate. His mother held his baby sister in her arms, trying to console her.

Love to be tortured until the only love they could have was for Big Brother. This is because the government is determined to stop them as they are trying to abolish orgasm, removing all human bonds. ?The sex instinct will be eradicated.? Orwell shows how the Party is dehumanising citizens